Coseley ( ) is a village in the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, in the West Midlands County, England. It is situated north of Dudley itself, on the border with Wolverhampton. Though it is a part of the Dudley North constituency. It also falls within the Wolverhampton South-East parliamentary constituency.
History
Coseley was originally a village in the ancient manor of Sedgley. In 1867, it joined with Brierley and Ettingshall to break away from the parish of Sedgley and formed Lower Sedgley Local Board District. In 1875, the name was changed to Coseley Local Board District by order of the Council and, in 1895, became Coseley Urban District. At this stage, most of the Coseley area was occupied by industrial and agricultural land; it was known during this time for its Carboniferous fossils.
Coseley Urban District Council built several thousand council houses and flats over a 40-year period from the mid-1920s which changed the face of the area. Most of these were built around Woodcross, Lanesfield, Wallbrook, and Brierley.
Coseley gained a cinema, on the corner of Mason Street and Birmingham New Road, during the 1930s, part of the Clifton chain, but this closed in January 1963 as a result of the postwar decline in cinema audiences brought on by the rising popularity of home television. The building was later demolished and a veterinary surgery now occupies the site.
Since 1927, Coseley has also had a direct road link with Birmingham and Wolverhampton. The Birmingham New Road, a dual carriageway, was laid out at this time, though it has become plagued with traffic congestion in recent years.
Bean Cars opened a factory at Coseley in 1919, with another being in operation in central Dudley. The new factory was situated in the south-east of the district near the border with Tipton, and a subsequent second phase of the factory (at the other side of a now-defunct railway line) was actually situated in Tipton, as were its offices in Sedgley Road West, which had been taken over by Tipton Urban District Council by the end of the 1930s. Bean ceased production of passenger cars in 1929, and for the next two years switched to commercial vehicles. After 1931, Bean switched ventures again - this time to making car parts. It was a key supplier for the largest independent British carmaker - British Motor Corporation, British Leyland, Austin Rover, Rover Group and most recently MG Rover - until the business closed due to financial problems in October 2005. Its demise was largely blamed on the closure of its key client MG Rover six months earlier. The Tipton part of the Bean site was demolished shortly afterwards and developed for housing, but the Coseley section was not demolished until the summer of 2008. The land has yet to be redeveloped. The former Newey Goodman site, which was divided into industrial units after the company was broken up during the 1990s, was completely abandoned by 2014, but remains undeveloped.
Cannon Industries, famous for producing gas and electric cookers, was based in Coseley from 1861 until the closure of its Havacre Lane factory in 1993. However, the bulk of the factory buildings were retained as Cannon Business Park, a mix of industrial and commercial ventures. The original factory site in Darkhouse Lane lay abandoned for many years but was demolished in 2018 with a new housing development currently being built on the site. The access road to the new housing development has recently been named Cannon Park Way.
The main "high street" in Coseley is Castle Street. Most of the current buildings have been built since the 1960s. A by-pass was opened on 23 August 1989, incorporating a widened section of Green Street, to relieve congestion in the town centre.
Civic History
Originally an urban district in Staffordshire, Coseley had unsuccessfully bid for borough status in 1937. In 1966, the south of Coseley became part of the Dudley County Borough, and since 1974, the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands. However, the north of the Brierley area and most of Ettingshall were merged into the Wolverhampton County Borough instead, while a smaller area bordering Tipton was transferred into the expanded borough of West Bromwich, in turn becoming part of Sandwell in 1974.